Administrators should wake up, find solutions
by Sherri Jones, reporter

    Rage! Rage!

    Have you ever felt so mad that you want to lash out?

    Everyday hundreds of teenagers feel like this … I feel like this.

    A girlfriend/boyfriend leaves you, people make fun of you, and no one understands.

    High school is not what it used to be … it’s worse!

    School administrators have no idea what the modern teen goes through.

    And of course, parents are behind the times.

    So, whom do teens talk to?

    They don’t talk to anyone. After all, whom can they trust to understand their innermost feelings? Remember: X-Files … Trust no one. As a result, feelings mount.

    Suicide used to be the solution, but now it’s mass murder. I actually understand this mentality! How else can people express rage and make others feel the pain that they do?

    Friends, family and even counselors have no idea of the anger that breeds in school.

    It’s hate for all. It’s not racial, gender or establishment based. It’s just pure hate.

    And it has been bred in our school systems for years. We have seen the signs: metal detectors, security guards and falling grades.

    Public schools tried to stop the problem, not solve it. Look what has happened … violence at extreme levels.

    Individuals try and express their anger. Some are random acts and others planned. But the major problem is we can’t stop an individual.

    It’s like finding a needle in a haystack.

    Nationally, 5 percent of students reported feeling too unsafe to attend school at least once in the 30 days preceding the Nation Youth Risk Behavior Survey.

    Twenty percent of high school students reported carrying a weapon (e.g., gun, knife or club) at least once in that period.

    Approximately 8 percent reported carrying a gun, and 10 percent reported having carried a weapon on school property on one or more occasions in those 30 days.

    According to a recent report issued by the Department of Education, over 6,000 students were expelled in 1996-1997 for taking guns to their public schools.

    Despite the prevalence of gun carrying in schools, school shootings still remain relatively rare events.

    Since 1992, approximately 190 shooting deaths have occurred in American schools (both student and faculty/staff).

    While clearly a serious issue, it must be noted that these 190 school-related deaths represent only about 1 percent of all youth killed with guns.

    Every day approximately 100,000 children are assaulted at school. Additionally, 5,000 teachers are threatened with physical assault and 200 are actually attacked.

    Most of the violence students are exposed to occurs in their home neighborhood and in the neighborhood surrounding the school rather than in the school itself.

    A school setting is “contaminated” by the attitudes, expectations and behaviors that students and teachers carry from other settings into the school, as well as their immediate experiences within the schools.

    Exposure to violence is psychologically toxic. Exposure may produce generalized emotional distress as well as disruptions in interpersonal relationships, problems with aggression, conduct disorder or truancy. Other results of violence include cognitive, psychological or physical issues related to learning and teaching, and physical symptoms, such as chronic fatigue.

     The effects of exposure to violence in schools may spread to others within the school setting.

    This spread, or “contagion,” changes the school setting in ways that negatively alter school interactions and interfere with the schools’ capacity to achieve its educational and social goals.

    Widespread concern about violence within a school may reduce the quality of teaching, disrupt classroom discipline, limit teachers’ availability to students before or after the school day and reduce students’ motivation to attend school and/or willingness to participate in extracurricular activities.

    Such measures are costly and reflect the real and unpleasant image of being locked up.

    They divert funds from efforts to reform education and restructure schools: to raise standards by improving the curriculum, reducing class size, providing professional development programs for teachers or special programs for students.

    All of these strategies are important and, perhaps, necessary.

    However, they are too little and, perhaps, too late. Most strategies to curb violence in school and society are designed to respond to violence after it has occurred rather than to prevent it.

    What’s the solution?

    Schools will, of course, do the wrong thing by adding security and being even more oppressive.

    We know that doesn’t work.

    Let’s find something that does.